Disclaimer: This article was written by a student sharing their personal experiences, not an expert. This should not be taken as professional advice or support. If you or a loved one is struggling with disordered eating, check out the National Eating Disorders Association for help and support.
I spent my three months of summer in treatment for an eating disorder. It was a life changing decision that has improved everything in my life, but not without a cost. Recovery has taken all of my energy and brain space, and consumed most of my writing. It is the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done, and it has been completely worth it. I’m not ready to share everything, but reading about others experiences has been so important in my own healing. If you relate to this, I see you, I hear you, and I understand. Hopefully this helps you feel less alone.
No matter how confident in your “control” you are, if you have an eating disorder, it takes over your entire life. In December of 2024, I finally talked to my therapist about my life-long issues with food. In March 2025, my doctors got involved, and in April I started seeking out treatment. I didn’t want to, not really, but everything was spiraling out of control and I didn’t know how to stop it. My friends and healthcare providers were concerned, and after intake phone call after intake phone call, it was clear that I had a problem.
What shocked me was the level of care that I was recommended for, a PHP (partial hospitalization) program that estimated around 6-8 weeks before a stepdown. I would be in treatment 30 hours a week as soon as I came home from school. When seeking out help, I earnestly thought that I would just see a therapist maybe once every two weeks and learn how to muscle through my obsessions. I spent the weeks leading up to enrollment in shock and disbelief. I was a fraud, the doctors were making a mistake. When I got there, I would be turned away.
I believed, as most people with eating disorders believe, that I wasn’t sick enough to receive treatment. Not only did my body size and shape confirm this for me, but so did the dieticians and doctors that I had worked with over the years. They, as treatment for other medical issues, had continually recommended dieting and weight loss, which worsened my eating disorder behaviors, and allowed me to think that what I was doing was healthy. There’s a singular portrayal in pop culture of what someone with an eating disorder looks like, acts like, and the medical issues that come with it. I hadn’t reached that point, and therefore I was a fraud. If (and, as I secretly hoped, when) I began to look & act like her, I would actually deserve to receive treatment. Unfortunately the reality is, I would never be sick enough to believe that I needed treatment. My eating disorder would never be satisfied, and as long as I listened to it, neither would I.
My friends and doctors were incredibly helpful in validating my struggles, and encouraging me to reach out for help. But ultimately, I entered treatment with a primary goal:
To eradicate my emotional distress
Every day I dealt with guilt, shame, intense amounts of anxiety surrounding my eating disorder behaviors, and my general life. It was the emotions that had become debilitating, I believed, not my behaviors. And sure, I knew that some of my behaviors were an issue, but they were also my primary coping mechanism, the only way I actually knew how to act.
I believed that treatment could help me learn how to control my emotions better, and if I got good enough at that, then I would be able to keep my eating disorder around. Get rid of the distressing, “bad” behaviors, and keep the comfortable, “good” ones.
That’s bullshit though, you can’t have half of an eating disorder. If you keep it around, it will come back (and likely even worse than before). As my friend who pushed me into treatment said, you have to “kill it with a gun.”
And I did want to recover! Despite my fears, I did want to feel better. I just had a bit of a learning curve to realize what that meant. Thankfully I had the best treatment team I could ask for; the providers and other clients in my program were incredibly kind, welcoming, and honest. I pushed back against my anxieties and tried to match their energies: participating in every group, doing the homework every night, and working through difficult meals and snacks.
It was hard as fuck though. The first few weeks of treatment, my behaviors at home got worse, and the ED noise was louder than it had ever been. I was crying every day, I was anxious all the time, and I kept wondering what the point of all this work was. I kept wanting to quit, climbing this mountain was too hard. But if I stopped, I knew I would tumble into a bottomless pit of despair, and was too afraid to do that. I was at a standstill with treatment. Too afraid to keep pushing, afraid it will get worse, but knowing if I stopped it would definitely get worse.
I was experiencing a J-curve, something common in ED recovery. Think of an eating disorder like a parasite. If you try to get rid of a parasite, initially it will fight back. Symptoms get worse than before as an attempt to save itself, before you turn a corner in recovery, and you start to see improvement. It becomes worth it.
So I pushed through. And it got better. I (mostly) stopped wanting my comforting behaviors to stick around. I swallowed the uncomfortable truth that if I wanted to get better, I had to shoot for 100%. I began seeing the positive effects of following meal plan, of using the therapeutic skills, and working with the providers against my eating disorder. We were a team, and I started a list of reminders for myself, to look at and remember the bad things that my eating disorder had given me– or in reverse, the good things that treatment was giving me back.
my writing came back
Brain fog is no joke, and as much as I wanted to prescribe my lack of inspiration, and difficulty writing the quantity (and quality) that I knew I was capable of as burnout, I also wasn’t fueling my body correctly. A combination of stress, ED noise, and lack of proper nutrition had left my brain blank, and I became frustrated with myself. This was something that I couldn’t just push through, and my writing is something that I can’t live without. Not only is it my entire degree, but it’s how I prefer to express myself. I need to write for myself, and I also need to be able to share it.
I feel more
“If you want to numb something, you have to numb everything.”
No matter how badly I wanted to only run away from the uncomfortable emotions, I stopped feeling positive ones as well. And even when engaging in behaviors allowed me to settle into a comfortable numbness, there was always a thrum of anxiety and depression underneath it. I was allowing my mental illness to take over my life, while believing that I was managing it. And even in situations where I would expect myself to be happy, it was so difficult when there was so much food noise constantly happening in my brain.
Now, even though I deal with the incredibly difficult emotions that come with recovery, I’m also happy! And excited, and scared! I experience a fuller range of emotions, and I’m able to cope with the difficult ones in a healthy way, now that my brain isn’t constantly running on empty.
I became a better friend
Maybe not during early treatment, when literally all I could talk about was treatment and my ED (shout out to the friends who sat through hours of me rehashing the same things over and over), but when I am able to break through the ED fog. I can’t count the number of times I turned down hanging out with friends because the activity involved food, and it didn’t adhere to the strict rules I had set for myself. I don’t want to avoid the people I care about, and I want to be able to share meals or snacks with them. If they judge me for that, then it’s not someone I want to be around. And I don’t want to judge them for it either. My ED is a harsh critic, and while it’s mainly self-directed, comparison is a bitch. My friendships are not a competition for me to feel bad about, they’re loving relationships.
I also am able to actually talk to my friends, and hold meaningful conversations again. I’m not just thinking about myself and food all the time, spacing out while my mind is anxiously racing. I have the emotional energy to help them through their problems. And hang outs are also allowed to be fun! I’m allowed to let go and banter without worrying how I look at that moment, laughing across the table. I don’t want to be mean and judgmental, or self absorbed. I want to be kind, fun, and creative. Someone that you can trust and rely on. Part of my identity is my relationships with other people, and I’m getting that back again.
My labs improved
When the ED noise gets really loud, and nothing else is able to get through, I remind myself of the scientific measurements I have that show a life without it is healthier than a life with it. The health issues I had blamed on my “unhealthy” diet and body, that I tried to control through restricting, actively got worse the more I engaged in behaviors. It was a vicious cycle I felt like I was trapped in, and it fed off of shame. I was shocked that the labs and vitals taken every week actually showed stark improvement after just one week of eating more regularly. They’ve only gotten better, and stabilized, the higher my meal plan compliance has gotten. It’s something that I’ve cried over in private, and that brings me great relief whenever I think about it. It’s proof that my eating disorder is wrong, and that I can lead a happy and healthy life on my own. It’s worth everything to me.
I could sit here for hours listing out more reasons that I’m so deeply grateful to choose recovery every day. I thought that recovering from an eating disorder meant that I just lost my eating disorder. But instead, I gained everything. Recovery is worth it.
Returning to college after discharging has been a struggle, losing some of the consistent support that I had gotten used to over the summer. But my support systems are still there, even though it looks different now. Calling my friends that I met in treatment to share a meal or snack together, my weekly sessions with my therapist and dietician, and going out for dessert after class with my friends instead of hiding away in my room. I’m choosing what makes me happy, and keeps me strong. And even on the hard days, I’m going to keep choosing it.